


tangled souls

by the_mixed_up_files_of_me



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: F/M, I'm the actual worst at tagging oh my god, basically this is a continuation of the ending of TLJ, it literally begins seconds after TLJ ends, wow this is really angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 00:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13155054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_mixed_up_files_of_me/pseuds/the_mixed_up_files_of_me
Summary: ❛If this were another world, another war, another life, in his mind he would bring her hand to his lips and tangle his hand in hers.But the reality is an abandoned Resistance base, a war that cuts even family apart, and two people with inescapably twisted lives. ❜





	tangled souls

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! I'm back again with another Reylo fic because I'm total trash for these this powerful OTP. This fic was inspired by this tweet I came across by @mightyreylo on twitter:
> 
> {IN AN ALT. ENDING OF TLJ, WHEN REY SEES BEN IN THEIR LAST FORCE VISION, SHE LOOKS BACK AND SAYS, "Chewie, wait." THEN SHE RUNS OUT AND BACK INTO THE BASE, NOT CARING ABOUT THE WORRIED YELLS OF HER FRIENDS, BEFORE SHE JUST RUNS INTO BEN'S ARMS. "Come home."
> 
> "You know I can't."}
> 
> So that's my inspiration for this fic! Onto the fic and happy reading! Xx

 

The worst, most painful tears are the silent ones. The burning rivers that saturate the skin and the only sounds that escape from the throat are marred, throbbing breaths.

It's a ripple in the Force, a sharp pang that runs like a knife through Rey.

The bond, forged out of the stars and the invisible power that encompasses them all. The bond is still alive, a beating heart inside of her chest. Untouched by Snoke's death, the bond is the scarlet ribbon between her and the fallen Skywalker.

Kylo's on his knees; she can see it in her mind. Digging her fingertips deep into the headrest of the passenger seat in the Falcon, her eyes are trained ahead of her. Just beginning to lift the Falcon off of the salt-ridden ground, the kindly Wookie is murmuring to R2-D2. Leia is saying words to both of them; Rey can't hear them. Her gaze goes glassy, out of focus as her mind stretches itself to see him in vivid colours.

His army is patrolling the hallways but he's isolated, entirely alone and lonely in the room his mother had been only moments before. That concept, in of itself, is enough to bring him to his knees. He can still feel her presence, lingering in the air.

And Rey; he'd been staring towards her when she shut the door. Only material doors are easy to crush by the Force. Knowing no bounds, no boundaries, that humming bond between them follows her through every door. She can't lock it out, can't lock him out.

Rey's palm lifts, brushing against her cheekbones. Lowering her hand, salty tears run and drip off of her. And yet, she's not crying; her eyes are entirely dry.

 _He_ , she realises, _is the one crying._

Whether subconscious or not, he is and it's a trembling release. Still in hanging disbelief that he destroyed his master, still aching from the physical effort of splitting the lightsaber, still at war with himself for letting Rey go, Kylo's only comfort has always come from her warm and steady presence through the Force.

Only now, he's realised that he's lit the ribbon between them on fire and has to watch it burn whether he wants to or not.

All of these scattered thoughts race through Rey, as if she's the filter in his mind; the thoughts are entirely out of her control, she can't escape his pain or get away from it. Taking in a breath of air, her muscles itch to move.

Tugged by the gravitational pull between them, some fragmented part of her wants to move to him. Resentment still sharp in her bloodstream, however the endless rotation of the thought _he made his choice_ , is constantly intercepted by the whisper in the back of her mind:

_Did he really?_

The tears that she's sharing with him seem impossible to be shed by an unfeeling monster. The conflict, it ebbs and flows through every vein in his body. Every thought, every flicker of his gaze, every second that arduously slips by in his life.

In response to his crushing pain, her chest begins to heave in broken sobs that seem to suck all of the oxygen from her lungs. Silent, internalised and private, only one thought breaks through her fogging conscious mind.

_There's still Light in him. There's still Light in him, there's still Light in him..._

"Chewie, stop the Falcon." Forcing herself to distance her mind far enough from Kylo to breathe again, the words slip past her lips quicker than she anticipates. She's certain that everyone on the entire Falcon has paused their activity to lock eyes on her; their gazes bore into the nape of her neck.

Making a skidding, botched landing, the Wookiee complies, his confusion evident. Rey doesn't let herself pause to look at any of them, especially Leia. Her heart lifts from her chest to her throat; her feet begin to move of their own accord. Their pace quickens as the faint drumming sensation in her mind of purpose grows louder and louder.

They're calling after her, as if realising what she's doing once her feet drop onto the salty ground. Leaving rows of scarlet footsteps behind herself, she starts off running across the battlefield almost as wildly as her heartbeat. _If I can just get past the battlefield I can get in to him..._

Kylo isn't ignorant to the pulse that she's coming for him. His head lifts, struck by the realisation and paralysed by it.

With no lightsaber to defend herself with, Rey lifts her hand and let's the Force burst from her fingertips. Deep inside of her, something stirs; untapped rage. The slow buildup that has escalated, reaching a critical tipping point.

Ben Solo was _supposed_ to be with her on the Falcon. He was supposed to be in his mother's arms. His conflict was supposed to be resolved, his mind was supposed to be at peace. The First Order was supposed to crumble at their feet as their combined power restored balance to the galaxy.

Disappointed anger blossoms in her heart and it flows through her.

In her mind, it's slow, as if submerged underwater as the First Order guards point their guns at her. With a flick of her wrist, bullets deflect away from her. A hand clamps onto the base of her neck from behind; without looking back at the guard, she reaches past her shoulder and pushes him back with the bolt of energy. Disarming several others with a single gesture, the white crystals beneath her seem to encourage her to run faster. Her steps are so quick the scarlet prints she leaves behind grow lighter, undefined and vague.

The rocks that she'd cast aside earlier are still laying aside the pathway as she finds the opening to the base. Compared to the shining daylight, everything is dim and hushed inside. Most of the guards are stretched out, looking for any Resistance intel left behind. Slipping past them with a stealth and skill that is only born from years of surviving living amongst the worst creatures in the Jakku desert, Rey trusts her instincts to find Kylo. He's not reaching out to her anymore; breaking it off as best he can, Rey is left to the listen and trust the low and distant push and pull that they subconsciously radiate.

His back is to her when she finds him and materialises in the doorway; he feels her stand there, hears her silence. Pausing to catch her breath, she moistens her dry lips and takes a step closer to him.

He doesn't turn to face her for a long moment that hangs in suspension. Had this been earlier today, if he weren't so dry and empty, hollowed by his own core that shakes like a bursting star, perhaps he would have let himself be angry with her for turning away his offer. In some way, he understands her reasons although he hates them, but this understanding is enough for him to finally speak. "What are you doing here?"

Turning around, he draws himself to every inch of his full, towering height. As soon as his gaze obligatorily locks onto hers, she sees the swollen circles around his dark eyes and the lashes that fringe his eyes still are saturated heavily with both shed and unshed tears. The sight strikes her like an open wound, equally raw. There's hard edges on his face again though as his lips draw close together, not the soft curves that she'd studied in the elevator hours ago. His hope, which she had first seen a flare of on his face when they'd reduced Snoke's throne room to rubble, has faded like the last rays of light before nightfall.

To be with no hope, entirely isolated in more ways that just physical is no stranger to Rey. Had she not managed to keep salvaging her hope over and over again as tribulations corroded her in the past years, she'd never be standing here with him now. She found her hope on her own; _others_ , the realisation dawns, _can not._

They need someone to search through the broken remains with them and help them find it.

Salvaging broken beings is familiar territory to Rey.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Rey finds herself rushing towards him and closing off the distance between them. Her small arms wrap around his body with such force that she loses her balance; he catches her, of course he does. Locking his arms around her waist, his back loosens its tense muscles enough to slant forward and push deeper into her embrace. Pressing her face into the folds of his onyx shirt, she inhales his scent; it's rich and intoxicating.

Rey's eyes squeeze shut. "Come home."

His desperation unfurls in a thorny, dangerous storm. Rey is an ocean and he wants to drown in her. Swallowing back the overwhelming urge to break down in her arms completely, he buries and rubs the plane of his forehead against the exposed skin of her neckline. With a breathless, plaintive murmur that melds with crying out, he hates how much he wants to cling to her tighter, wants to be entirely absorbed in her warm and gentle arms.

Exploring fingertips above the licking, shadowed flames of the fire, when he'd taken off his glove and felt her skin on his...that's the last time that he's been able to touch her and it's been _too_ long. Silky tendrils of her brunette locks curl around his fingers as one glove-clad hand reaches to tuck her head into his palm and hold her closer. The leather barrier of the glove prevents any skin on skin contact, a necessary precaution.

Words come, of course they have to. He struggles to find control of his own voice. Kylo knows what he has to say but is grateful not to have to look her in the eyes as he says it. "You know I can't."

Somehow, she knew he'd say this long before he ever did. From the moment that her feet hit the ground as she'd leapt out of the Falcon, she knew that there would be little to no chance of him ever coming away with her.

The disappointed rage curls in her stomach, tingling heat gathering at the base of her spine. For once, just for once, why can't something go the way that it should? "I can forgive you if that's what you need." The sentence claws at her, begging to be elaborated on. _I forgive you, they can too..._

Kylo has to let her go; if he doesn't now, he never will. The taut grip that his arms have around her doesn't loosen despite his mental plea for them to. Standing for one bated moment, his outline still covering and framing her's, Kylo formulates, "It's not that easy. If it were...I'd have done it by now."

"Your mother misses you," Rey says, her voice marred by his chest. Refusing to lower her head, she maps out the sensation of his firm, solid figure under hands. Committing him to memory, she's trying to hold on to the wind; a moment that is only tangible for a fleeting moment before washing away for good. Venturing to say this, she hears herself say, "I miss you too."

A saber to the chest would be less painful. Finally unlatching her from his arms, lifting his face from the soft crook of her neck with one final brush of his lips and eyelashes against the sensitive skin, he has to pull away. The crushed expression painted onto her features shoots him like an electric bolt. Reaching forward, she takes his gloved palm in her's; the material is abrasive and scratches at her callused, capable hands.

Silently, she tugs at the edge of the glove. He holds his hand still, watching the crown of her head bend forward in focus. Compared to the trapped, confining glove, the air that touches his exposed skin is a soft breath.

The glove falls at their feet; neither notice.

Kylo keeps his hand from trembling when she touches him searchingly. If this were another world, another war, another life, in his mind he would bring her hand to his lips and tangle his hand in hers.

But the reality is an abandoned Resistance base, a war that cuts even family apart, and two people with inescapably twisted lives.

Rey's jaw aches as she pushes down any threat of emotion. Skimming the pads of her fingers across his veined, bony, textured pattern, she thinks back to when he was only Darkness and she was only Light. Resisting the urge to be somewhere in-between with him is almost more than she can bear now. It was so much easier, so much more straightforward before when the answers seemed to be splayed out concisely.

All of the ebony edges and alabaster angles have smudged to dusky ashes.

"I can't go, you know that I can't. I can't, _won't_ , face them yet."

"When will you?"

"Maybe one day, one day in the future."

 _Future_. This word strikes a chord deep inside of her. Her gaze lifts and meets his. "I saw your future. _Our_ future."

Her emphasis on _our_ presses on a pressure point. Their future, how could he have so blatantly misread it earlier? He's already wallowing in enough self loathing, he doesn't want the reminder of her rejection.

As if sensing his tension that swiftly rebuilds, Rey murmurs, "It's solid. It's far away from here and the First Order and even the Resistance. You can make it come faster if you come away with me. There's so much in between..."

"You're there too?" His tone is rougher, but with milder, more tender intentions.

Rey's eyes fall down to study his hand resting in her's. She's not looking towards him as she says, "The future is always changing. Never consistent. The only way I'll be there with you is if you make the right choices between now and then."

"And what if I do?"

He's watching her so intently that he notices even the smallest flicks of emotion and of reaction on her face. Still keeping her stare fixated on their light touch, she replies in a voice that is enriched in evasiveness. "If you do, then you won't regret it."

There is still a hint of longing in her tone when she finally raises her head to look at him. A face that she never thought would become familiar to her, eyes that she never thought would be so intent on her, hands that she never thought that she'd want to hold. If she lets him go now, she's left to wonder if he'll ever listen to the voice of Ben Solo again. The future, while solid now, can be broken into shattered pieces so easily.

"Please, just come with me." Her throat is hollow as the words echo into her mouth.

"Rey..." It's a broken heart begging to be mended. "They'll never forgive me. I can't go with you." _Even if I want to_.

He won't go and she can't stay.

As long as the Falcon is on this planet, everyone is in danger. Leaving without him a second time is worse than the first, even though scattered promises and tears get to be shared this time. Leaving and convincing herself that he's only a monster who is impossible to help would be easier the first time; not this time, not after he came apart like unravelling thread in her arms and murmured her name almost as if praying to her.

This time, she's aware that she's leaving someone who is incredibly _human_ and that's worst of all.

Etching to memory the last seconds of his hand in her's before she is forced to let it go and walk away, Rey draws in her breath and her courage.

Trust, belief...those phrases had been dropped throughout the lessons Luke taught her on those tempestuous days on the island. Her future with Ben Solo, their blissfully peaceful one that is so close and yet a million world away... only Ben Solo can bring that peace. Whether he rises to the challenge to face himself is decided by Kylo Ren; the choice cannot be made by Rey, only hoped for.

She has to trust in the Light, believe in the living and vivid existence of Ben Solo.

 _Hope_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 Comments and kudos are always appreciated and always make me smile! Feel free to chat with me anytime in the comments below. Xx


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